Coastal floods, driven by extreme sea levels, are a major hazard both nationally and globally, with wide-ranging social, economic and environmental impacts. Nationally, it is estimate that £150 billion of assets and 4 million people are currently at risk from coastal flooding in the UK [1]. Coastal flooding is rated as the second highest risk for causing civil emergency in the UK, after pandemic influenza [2]. Combined with fluvial flooding, it is responsible for at least £0.25bn in annual economic damages [3]. Coastal flooding is a growing threat due to accelerating average sea-level rise and possible changes in storminess associated with climate change [4] as well...

The latest report of Working Group I of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) combines new and better observations with improved models to provide a clearer and more definite picture of humanity’s influence on the climate system, and the paths we can choose for the future. The atmosphere continues to warm, with the last three decades each being warmer than the one before, and all three being warmer than any other decade since reliable observations began in the 1850s. Warming is seen almost everywhere on the Earth’s surface, and many observed changes are unprecedented on scales of decades to millennia. We also now have...

Glaciers are the ‘canary in the coal mine’. Shrinking glaciers are the world’s most visual, most impressive evidence of globally warming temperatures. This is particularly evident around the Antarctic Peninsula, which is currently warming at around six times the global average. This warming is driving dramatic changes in snow and ice cover; glaciers are thinning, accelerating and receding, and their buttressing ice shelves are collapsing. The Antarctic Peninsula The ~400 glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula are particularly sensitive to climate change because they are relatively small and are located on a high mountainous spine, projecting northwards from the Antarctic continent towards warmer latitudes....